The Song of the Shepard: Selected Poems
by Charlotte Ann Kent
Summary: A series of one-shot Mass Effect poems featuring Rosamund Shepard, a paragade vanguard Femshep. So far it includes such poems as, "Into the Serpent Nebula" and "The Sands of Edolus". Some of those yet to come are "The Last Stand of Fai Dan" and "Over Alien Shores". {"The Song of the Shepard" in it's entirety can be found at charlotteannrose.wordpress (plus . com)}
1. into the Serpent Nebula

_All of the poems in this story are taken from my Mass Effect poetic epic "The_ _Song_ _of the Shepard_ _". The whole thing can be found on my Website (Of Stars and Ships and Meadows Green), but this is for those who prefer one-shots and short poetry._

 _The poem below is from 'The Citadel' second Canto of_ _The Song_ _. The starship Normandy is travelling to speak with the highest interspecies Council about the attack on a colony ... and about the strange ship which brought the attackers._

* * *

The Normandy's swift, far swifter than light.  
On our own drive core we outpace in flight,  
The beams of the stars, the Milkyway's blaze  
We leave them behind and fly past their rays.  
She takes the final mass relay  
But days from the battle, though so far away.  
We burst on vista of lavender light.  
The great Serpent Nebula's glowing alight  
With the blazing of stars in their infancy  
Young starlets and white, old vapours and bright  
Radiant purple transparency.  
Wreathed in the mists of this wavering cloud  
Floats a vast silver structure, ancient and proud.  
From a huge central ring, five wings fly out  
Long, smooth, and curved, revolving about.  
We skim through the billows, plunge through the veils  
Towards this, the Citadel, rich of old tales.  
From the Bridge where I, with my ground team, stand,  
Prepared to disembark, as soon as we land,  
I see the vast arms sliding by, ships in flight,  
And one mammoth vessel of beauty and might,  
A fleck beside it, is the Normandy  
A gnat beside a monarch of the sea.  
'Look at that monster!'  
Williams cries  
A light of delight shining bright in her eyes.  
'She's the Ascension. Asari flagship.'  
Alenko supplies. I hear Joker quip  
Something about its guns and its size.  
But I see she is graceful, like our fair allies.  
Yet she's nothing like so large, not nearly,  
As was the dark shape which hung over the valley.

We dock aboard the Presidium Ring  
And walk among trees and fountains that sing.  
Its like a deep canyon; a lake runs below  
And above, the young sun-stars shine white as snow.  
Along leafy terraces and through lofty halls,  
Anderson leads us three, past waterfalls.  
Around us are Turians, fierce and tall  
The froggy Salarians, lithe and small  
Asari star-women, blue and fair  
And aliens stranger – their sounds fill the air.


	2. Battle in the Wards

__From__ _ _'The Citadel' s__ _ _econd Canto of__ __ _ _The Song of the Shepard__ _ _. Shepard and her fellow marines, Lieutenant Alenko and Gunnery-Chief Williams, are searching for evidence to corroborate their report that 'Saren Arturius' an alien from an allied race – led an attack on their colony.__

* * *

Initial dismissal stops not our case.  
We reconnoitre and pick up the pace.  
If we believe truly, and he has gone rogue,  
There'll be other matters wherein it is told.  
From here on the Citadel we can well reach  
Numerous networks and search for a breach  
In Saren's cover and catch him in speech,  
When he slipped up, or when overreached.  
Many leads we follow up, many trails of facts we search,  
Through the record's sordid tales, look for things that do not work,  
Combing, combing, finding out, little tips and hints that lurk,  
Digging, digging, turning up, making contacts in the murk.  
We pick up the trail of a Quarian girl  
Of whom a 'Shadow Broker' agent heard  
She called on C-Sec shortly since  
With a claim to have damning evidence  
'Gainst an unnamed spectre who had done ill  
But the cop on duty wrote her off as a shill.  
Following sightings and news reports  
My team heads to a clinic, down in the wards.  
It's more like a space station here below,  
Clean and bright still, but no sunlight like snow.  
With slow plodding steps the Elcor move  
On their four trunk-like limbs, while silent and smooth  
The strange Hanar people glide by in the air  
Like aerial jellyfish, and, here and there  
We see in the passages straight human forms.  
And sometimes a keeper, six-legged and forlorn.  
No word do these speak, and they never look up  
Just trudge along with steps oddly abrupt.  
They call them the keepers, for they keep this place  
Like a strange, taciturn, dwindled janitor race.

The clinic seems to be closed at first  
But the door is unlocked. The latch is burst.  
Thus clearly invited, we slip inside  
Soft down a hall, to a room low and wide.  
A doctor struggles in a gunman's grasp,  
His voice shouts threats with the sound of a rasp  
But not to her and not to us.  
Another is here, beyond in the dusk.  
The captor's gun's in the doctor's face.  
I hear her breathing loud with fear  
I shout and he looks for a moment's space.  
A rifle cries out sharp and near.  
'Fancy seeing you here, Shepard.  
Thanks for the distraction.'  
The gunman falls to the floor of the ward.  
And out steps Garrus Vakarian.  
The doctor's alright, just shaken and bruised,  
The gunman had asked, and she had refused  
To tell tales of a Quarian who'd sought help from her  
But she's glad to tell lawful investigators.  
Vakarian's too, is on the Quarian's trail.  
He cannot believe how bad C-Sec failed.  
The doctor well remembers the girl,  
A young thing; enviro-suit purple with swirls.  
Her wounds were light, but she seemed in danger,  
And asked the doctor of the Shadow Broker.  
An odd question that, but the doctor knew  
Of a nearby agent, who she sent her to,  
A local bar owner, named Amos Fist.  
We check on him through the agent we know.  
Yes, Fist was, a while ago  
But now a Spectre connection exists….  
We go at once, the girl is in peril.  
She's gone straight to Saren and may well be killed.  
With us comes eager Garrus Vakarian.  
He's __done__ with C-Sec. But not done with Saren.

Garrus knows where this 'Fist' can be found  
And swift leads us thither, he knows well these grounds,  
To seedier places, and dim lit halls,  
Far from the sound of the bright waterfalls,  
To a back-end nightclub, closed and locked.  
He stops at the door, and briskly knocks.  
Perhaps we four look too military.  
Perhaps our approach is far too scary.  
But rather than asking us what we want  
Or pretending there's nobody left at this haunt,  
They throw open the doors and gunfire flies.  
We have to take cover and dodge to the sides.  
We demand to see Fist, but they do not heed.  
We fear that they've done some dreadful misdeed.  
Through the door, to the dance floor, and over the counters  
We fight past the armed thugs and big Krogan bouncers.  
Even the janitors stand in our path  
But they choose to take our advice not our wrath.  
Vakarian notes my tack with surprise  
' "Get a new job"? Well! Smooth improvise.'  
Deep in the dark of the back-room office,  
We find the hiding miserable Fist,  
He thinks his time's up, expects only death,  
And pleads out surrender in quaking breath.  
'We're not here to kill you. Call off your thugs!'  
He sends them off from his place on the rug.  
The Quarian came here, not to long ago,  
He set up a meeting for her to sell info,  
But, she won't meet the Broker's men  
Those waiting there are assassins of Saren.  
With any luck, we'll re-catch this guy later.  
But time is short. The girl is in danger.  
We take the swiftest path we can  
And reach the appointed dark dead end.  
We quietly creep along the way  
Listening to movement some ways away.  
A young voice speaks, high-pitched, somehow canned.  
'Where is the Shadow Broker?'  
The voice demands.  
The answer is low and we cannot hear.  
'No. The deal's off.'  
The young voice holds no fear.  
But weapons are drawn and flash in the dark.  
Vakarian's bullet is right on the mark.  
The skirmish is brief. The assassins are few.  
They had not expected me and my crew.  
The girl comports herself well, and holds her ground.  
She's used to handling herself from the sound.  
But when they're gone, she thanks us the same  
Putting her own naivete to blame.  
Tali Zorah Na'rayya's her name when we ask.  
Her face hides behind a dark purple mask.  
She hears our story of Saren and strife  
'Why then, I can thank you for saving my life.'  
She recently encountered a troupe of Geth  
Took down several, and escaped the rest.  
She salvaged data from one's memory banks  
It was partly burned out and mostly blank  
But she found a recording worth digging for,  
Proud gloating words, heard just days before.

The checks are all run, the voice test bears out  
The data's combed back, origins check out.  
The speaker is Saren, the listener Geth  
Recorded but hours past the colonist's deaths.  
'Eden Prime was a major victory.'  
– His voice is filled with a terrible glee –  
'We're one step closer to finding it.  
One step closer to the Conduit.'  
Then another voice, mellow and deeper:  
'And closer to the return of the Reapers.'


	3. The Sands of Edolus

__From__ _ _'__ _ _The Search in Artemis Tau'__ __ _ _third__ _ _Canto of__ __ _ _The Song of the Shepard__ _ _.__ _While on another errand, the starship Normandy has picked up a distress signal from an uninhabited planet. Shepard has taken a landing party to the site of the signal._ __

* * *

The sky is the colour of mustard brew.  
The cold ground beneath us could never construe  
A fleck of good earth on its sharp barren slopes.  
Sand trickles round us in hard wind-blown ropes.  
In our truck, the "Mako", we search fruitlessly  
The Quarian, the Turian, and human me.  
The site is bare rock, sand, poison wind  
Though we scour the ground where the signal rings.  
But there's scattered equipment about in the dust  
Rent, as if gnawed, and half eaten with rust.  
I know it still, the marks are still clear.  
A squad of Alliance marines died here.  
The killer soon finds us, a huge snake-like beast  
With a foul ringed maw, and limbs many pieced.  
I take the wheel and Garrus the guns.  
Tali just tries to make sure the truck runs.  
Long we give battle on pallid grey sands  
Between the dark hills in their tumbling bands.  
But the killer is killed by the Mako's hot blasts  
And Garrus' quick eyes and his clawed hand so fast.  
The marines who died did not send the call.  
It was set up before, they were lured to their fall.  
We cannot discover who did it or why,  
Who set it up to send cries to the sky.  
One well placed shot blows the death trap away.  
We contact the ship, and we fly away.  
No travellers more will be lured to its hands  
But never those men will return from the sands.


	4. Therum

__From__ _ _'__ _ _The Search in Artemis Tau'__ __ _ _third__ _ _Canto of__ __ _ _The Song of the Shepard__ _ _.__ __ _The Normandy has come to a strange planet, searching for a alien archeologist._ __

* * *

Therum was formed many ages ago,  
From the hot iron rocks that round Knossos flowed  
For aeons it bloomed and blossomed and grew  
Peoples there flourished, who we never knew.  
Long since it was emptied of rational nau,  
A few marks still stand, surviving somehow,  
Where the land has not changed to bury them,  
Where the sea has not risen engulfing them,  
Where the mountains rose not to break them in pieces  
Where they fell not as prey to weather's caprices.  
It's chiefly for these few crumbling ruins  
That the planet is taken note of at all  
Few things now grow there  
Wizened and small.  
An ancient world, drawn close to its sun,  
A sad, empty world, it's days near done.

Over a rippled and reddened landscape  
Lit up with the glow of the rivers that drape  
Their hot molten ore across the worn bluffs  
The Mako rumbles and climbs through the dust.  
We call through the hot, thin, but breathable air,  
We scan for fresh footprints on weathered stairs.  
Our infra-red scanners are no good at all.  
Volcanic activity makes life-forms too small  
To stand out on the background of radiant heat.  
We look with our eyes, there's no way to cheat.  
The sky is dark with volcanic smoke.  
When the wind's from the north the air starts to choke.  
Garrus keeps checking we don't dehydrate  
And bits of heat training he coolly relates.  
As Kaidan Alenko wipes sweat from his brow,  
He points out that at least the humidity's low.  
They march cheerfully, stoutly along by my side  
Combing the ruin in the dust, heat, and dry.


	5. Ashley

__From__ _ _'__ _ _The Towers of Feros__ _ _'__ __ _ _fourth__ _ _Canto of__ __ _ _The Song of the Shepard__ _ _.__ _ _Shepard reflects upon her subordinate officer, Gunnery-Chief Williams__

* * *

She's a strange blending of the hard and the kind,  
Of deeds of the body, and flights of the mind.  
Once, in the hold, we happened to talk  
Of the vast fields of wonder outside the airlock,  
The light, and the movement, beyond the skies  
The flowing, the glowing nebulae  
The edge of the galaxy spinning away  
Far past the reaches of our stellar days  
The galactic diamonds lacing the void  
Which man cannot reach, but sing to him joy  
The hand of God in the constellations  
The laughing, blinding light of creation.  
I had not realized that she even saw this  
So many are blind and pass over bliss  
Unthinking, unseeing, and dead to the world.  
Not her. I realize that Ashley has heard  
The Song of the Morning which wise men know  
Sung in deep space where the deadly rays flow.


	6. The Tower

_From_ _'_ _The Towers of Feros_ _'_ _fourth_ _Canto of_ _The Song of the Shepard_ _._ _The Normandy is flying into a colony which sent out a report of Geth sightings._

* * *

The atmosphere is white with haze  
And swathed in clouds turned bright with rays.  
Through the wreathes of mist and air  
I glimpse two towers, tall and spare.  
Far, far above the ground they stand  
Bound only by a slender band  
Of ancient rock, from one to next.  
How smooth they stand, how unlike wrecks.  
It's said they were carved not built  
That their roots stretch down below the silt  
Of the moving, shifting marshlands below  
And down to the bedrock of Feros.  
The eastern tower holds "Exo-Geni"  
A mining, corporate investment entity.  
But the one on the west, they call Zhu's Hope  
Bound to the east by the narrow stone rope.  
There a tiny band of settlers live,  
Folk who have come to stay and give.  
We glide the vessel through a great stone window  
Into a vast open room in the stone.  
They answered our hails, told us where to go  
But the chamber is empty. We dock here alone.

The air in the bay is fresh and chill  
The wind round the tower whistles shrill  
The ground is lost in the mists below  
Around us wreathing vapour blows.  
We turn, Liara, Garrus, and I  
Into the tower, away from the sky.  
Liara's laid aside her tunic  
We girded her from our armoury,  
An armoured suit of soft silver  
And a gun as light as a metal reed.  
The path from the bay where the Normandy's docked  
Is simple to follow, though not truly marked.  
It's newly been handled by hands that care.  
It's clean and does not need repair.  
The halls cut straight from the seamless stone  
Cry out of their dwellers, yet we walk alone.  
Liara must see everywhere  
The vaulted chambers broad and fair,  
The narrow nooks and closets dark  
Far beyond the reach of spark  
The winding stairs and far pierced shafts  
Through which the soft white sunbeams laugh.  
It is believed this was once  
A great Prothean library  
Many many ages since  
A place of knowledge and of study.  
No known records here remain  
Just empty stone above the plain.  
Oh, how she wishes she could see  
This tower as it used to be!  
Now the calls of birds are all the sound,  
And here and there a pale vine twines around  
Through nooks and crannies in the shade.  
I wonder how many cracks it's made.


End file.
